Question N° 1 :Et si la pollution n'avait jamais été pour Los Angeles un véritable handicap mais, au contraire, la condition même de sa réussite et de son succès ?
Si la question peut paraître plus que provocante, elle n'en n'est pas moins légitime au vu des analyses développées par John Matthew Barlow dans sa critique de "Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles" dans lequel Chip Jacobs et William J. Kelly tentent une histoire de la lutte contre la pollution à L.A.
Pour Barlow cette bataille est totalement illusoire, "smog and air pollution are so embedded in Angeleno culture, it’s impossible to escape them".
(...) "We live in an era where politicians and business people, as well as economists and other academics baldly lie when they tell us that to cut emissions, to accord to Kyoto, would be economic suicide. This is especially true in North America. Meanwhile, we live in a culture that encourages us to buy bigger, to have more stuff. We are products of a culture that has encouraged us to be (post-)modern, to acquire more goods. Indeed, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush advised Americans that the best thing they could do to show their resilience against the terrorists was to go shopping! " (...)
(...) "On the one hand, it is easy to see why the AQMD parking lot is full of SUVs and the organisation’s former headquarters is now littered with drive-thrus; on the other, however, it is just as easy to see that behaviour such as this is destroying the environment whilst we are trying to save it. Los Angeles is far from the only location where this tension is clear."
"In Canada, (Barlow est canadien) we have a Prime Minister who, despite all evidence to the contrary, continues to tell us that to cut our emissions drastically would be to kill our economy, and has even used the current recession as an excuse to ignore the emissions problems emanating from the Alberta oil sands. " (...)
(...) "Moreover, Los Angeles would never have turned into a Mediterranean city for one simple reason: it is not in the cultural DNA of North Americans to replicate life on the French Riviera. Certainly, other options could have been explored, but they all would’ve fallen short of Athens or Rome." (...)
(...) "At any rate, Jacobs and Kelly remain cynical, despite all the work that has been done in Los Angeles, despite the countless sacrifices of various Angelenos at all levels of society, to ensure a better future. Certainly, as they note, of the 9,600 people who die per year from smog in California, the majority are in Los Angeles. But even that is a massive improvement over the mid-20th century. Moreover, it simply is not the case that the masses have tuned out and refused personal sacrifice."
Ce texte décapant, mais bienvenu pour remettre les choses en place et arrêter de trop s'illusionner sur certaines mutations, est lisible in extenso là. Il permet d'expliquer en partie l'échec du Sommet de Copenhague.
Question N° 2 : Et si le réchauffement climatique n'avait jamais été pour les Américains un véritable souci mais, au contraire, la condition même de leur réussite économique ?
Selon un sondage Gallup réalisé en décembre : "Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans (36%) believe that laws designed to reduce global warming will help the economy, while 42% believe those laws will hurt the economy."
"Despite this general support for the U.S.' putting pen to paper in Copenhagen, President Obama faces challenges in agreeing to some of the financial and environmental demands being placed on the U.S. at the conference, given U.S. public concerns about the potential economic impact of climate-change policy.
First and foremost, Americans clearly prefer taking major steps to improve the economy over taking major steps to reduce global warming at this time. Eighty-five percent of national adults choose improving the economy in this trade-off, including 93% of Republicans, 85% of independents, and 78% of Democrats."
Toutes les infos sur ce sondage, là.
Ces analyses et ces chiffres concernent les Etats-Unis, mais seraient bien évidement applicables dans tous les pays du monde.
